NZCLIMATE & ENVIRO TRUTH NO 95

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed by 154 States (including our own and plus the European Community) on 9th May 1992. It came into force on 21 March 1994.

It consisted essentially of a statement of Environmentalist religious dogma, following up the doctrine that humans are destroying the earth (or , rather, "the planet"), and calling for action on a principle means of destruction by humans, the emission of "greenhouse gases" by the combustion of fossil fuels..

"Climate Change" is a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.

They are prepared to admit that there is a possibility of "change of climate" apart from "climate change", but the only example they give is "natural variability", Natural change" and "man-made change" without greenhouse gases" have been eliminated.

The "Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme has the task, on the face of it, to investigate only "climate change", i.e. man-made change caused by increase of greenhouse gases. However, the scientists involved could not see how they could do this without trying to separate it from the other climate influences, including the two which they are not supposed to believe in. So they had a footnote on page 1 of "Climate Change 2001 as follows:

"Climate change in IPCC usage refers to any change in climate over time, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity"

This makes two concessions, They are prepared to study "natural variability", but not prepared to admit that there is such a thing as "natural change", so they, also, are against evolution "Natural changes" can only be "variable", a concept held firmly by medieval scholars but firmly rejected by scientists since the days of Hutton and Lyall.

As an important extra addition, they are prepared to study changes due to "human activity", which includes activities which do not involve changes in greenhouse gases. But when they talk about "human activity" in their conclusions everybody assumes that there is only one kind of human activity, emission of greenhouse gases. Such "human" influences on the climate as pollution, agriculture, or urban development can be ignored..

In practice they get all mixed up. They are forced, grudgingly, to admit that the most important greenhouse gas is water vapour, and its side influence, clouds; and changes in these are not, on the face of it, due to human greenhouse gas emissions. But they rescue this problem by calling both of these "feedbacks" to human greenhouse gas effects, so they are miraculously converted into "climate change".

Then they run into aerosols, which include the extra clouds caused by human emissions of sulphur, and "black clouds" caused by human pollution. Neither of these are, strictly, "climate change" caused by greenhouse gas emissions, but they find them useful because the effects are so little known that they can be used to fit curves into observation sequences by adding or subtracting just the right amounts..

What they cannot do is admit that human influences such as energy emissions, urbanisation, land-use change or calibration errors might be responsible for "changes of climate".

So, in the end, they endorse the environmentalist dogma that all changes are due to human greenhouse gas emissions, so then they can use their models which depend on this assumption. Once you admit that there are "changes of climate' that are not included in the models, the models become worthless..

The IPCC get themselves in an awful mess over their definitions. In the "Glossary" of "Climate Change 2001 they define ":Climate" as follows.

"Climate in a narrow sense is usually defined as the "average weather', or more rigorously, as the statistical description in terms of the mean and variability of relevant quantities over a period of time ranging from months to thousands or millions of years. The classical period is 30 years, as defined by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). These quantities are most often surface variables such as temperature, precipitation and wind. Climate in a wider sense is the state, including a statistical description, of the "climate system"..

Although they talk of "millions of years", in practice, they like to claim that any change that takes place over 1000 years is "unprecedented". They do not define "weather", but they do try to define "Climate System". as follows.

"The climate system is the highly complex system consisting of five major components: the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the cryosphere, the land surface and the biosphere, and the interactions between them. The climate system evolves in time under the influence of its own internal dynamics and because of external forcings such as volcanic eruptions, solar variations and human-induced forcings such as the changing composition of the atmosphere and land-use changes''.

Naughty naughty, We now have an admission of evolution, and even human-induced changes such as land-use changes which do not involve greenhouse gases. How did that slip through?

"Climate change refers to a statistically significant variation in either the mean state of the climate or in its variability, persisting for an extended period (typically decades or longer). Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land use.

Note that the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in its article 1, defines "climate change" as "a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed under comparable time periods" The UNFCCC thus makes a distinction between "climate change" attributable to human activities altering the atmospheric composisition and "climate variability" attributable to natural causes"

What a mess!!!. To start with, we are not allowed to know what "climate change" IS, only what it "refers to". Then there is talk of "statistically significant" a concept which is totally absent from all IPCC "attributions". Indeed, they even argue that such a concept is unnecessary for "climate change", and they never give guidance on the level of significance that might be required.

Then we "refer to" the "variability" of the "mean state of the climate", having already defined "climate" as "the average weather". We now have to contend with the variability of the average of the average weather, over, "typically", "decades or longer".

There is then a complete denial of the UNFCC definition. where they admit that "climate change" may be due to "natural internal processes", and even "anthropogenic changes" in "land-use", something definitely excluded by the UNFCCC. They then quote the UNFCCC definition without mentioning that they disagree with it.

"Climate variability refers to variations in the mean state and other statistics (such as standard deviations, the occurrence of extremes etc.) of the climate on all temporal and spatial scales beyond that of individual weather events. Variability may be due to natural internal processes within the climate system (internal variability) or to variations in natural or anthropogenic external forcing ((external variability)"

Again, it only "refers to" and we have another variability of the average of an average, plus the variability of standard deviations, occurrences of extremes etc. beyond "individual weather events", whatever they are. We also have the variability of "anthropogenic external forcings" as well as their "change"

"The fact that the global mean temperature has increased since the late 19th century and that other trends have been observed does not necessarily mean that an anthropogenic effect on the climate system has been identified. Climate has always varied on all time-scales, so the observed change may be natural. A more detailed analysis is required to provide evidence of a human impact"

Apart from the fact that the increase in the "global mean temperature" is largely already "attributable" to the "anthropogenic" effect of "land-use change", this is the only IPCC statement that should be taken seriously. It means that ALL of the computer-based climate models are worthless, because they assume that every change in the climate is exclusively caused by human changes in greenhouse gases. Why have politicians, media commentators the general public, and even many scientists not realised this?

Vincent Gray
75 Silverstream Road
Crofton Downs
Wellington 6004
New Zealand
Phone/Fax 064 4 9735939
"It's not the things you don't know that fool you.
It's the things you do know that aint so"
Josh Billings